With a US ban looming, TikTok portrays itself as a force for good

Two TikTok content creators livestream from outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Jan 10, 2025. A new ad campaign frames TikTok as a savior of Americans and a champion of small businesses as the app hurtles toward an April 5 deadline to sell the company to a non-Chinese owner or face a ban in the United States. — CAROLINE GUTMAN/The New York Times

In an emotional advertisement running on Facebook and Instagram over the past month, a young woman, Katie, talks about being diagnosed with an illness that resulted in kidney failure at age 19. But she was able to find a transplant match “because a stranger was scrolling on TikTok”.

Thanks to that stranger’s kidney, she continued, she was here today. “For some people, having TikTok has literally been life saving,” the company wrote in a caption punctuated by a tearful smiling emoji.